Cultural Heritage and Treasure Hunt: Mardin Pasajι

Tandem Turkey participant Lydia Drolia tells us about her visit to Mardin, in Turkey, as part of her involvement in Mardin Pasajı, a project designed to involve the local community and local actors to promote and get to know Mardin's cultural wealth, among other activities through a treasure hunt!

That was exactly what I felt about this city, that it is a case study, a vivid example of friendly and peaceful cultural co-existence that people must see, observe and examine.

But let’s take a step back: Diadrasis NGO and Peripatos cultural company from Greece dated Mardin Kültür and Özgür Kadin Kolektifi from Turkey, during the Partner Forum of Tandem Turkey 2018-19 in Tbilisi. We flirted a lot, promising that we will meet again and we did meet in September. Our study visit to beautiful Mardin was the beginning of our unique experience.

We did our research before, we knew that this place was like an open-air museum, but nothing could describe what we encountered. An amphitheatrical city full of glorious buildings, with great architectural details ready to be explored. The most fascinating thing was not just the breathtaking architecture, but the cultural mix, making the city a living example that peaceful mix of cultures can make gorgeous things, making us feeling optimistic about the future. That was exactly what I felt about this city, that it is a case study, a vivid example of friendly and peaceful cultural co-existence that people must see, observe and examine.

It was easy for us, to conclude that we should focus our joint project on that unrevealed gem called Mardin, even though we knew that would be challenging for many reasons. After exploring the city, wandering around, visiting cultural landmarks and talking with the locals we wanted to know what the needs of the community were, and how we could fill their gap through our project.

At that moment, we had an unofficial interview – open dialogue with some teenagers in order to get to know their feelings about their homeland. We soon realised that even if they loved their city, they did not know much about its cultural wealth. Surprisingly, when we asked about which cultural heritage is the most fundamental for them, they pointed out the intangible assets of their cultural heritage. Obviously, their everyday life helped them understand the value of intangible heritage since Mardin is full of sounds, smells, tastes, and people dancing and singing in the streets.

At that point, we thought we had to design a project for teenagers so as to familiarise them with Mardin’s culture and history. And what’s the best way for a teenager to learn? Of course through playing. That’s why we designed a treasure hunt in the city, highlighting the most important architectural landmarks.

Finally, we included 9 renown landmarks that participants were called to find after solving riddles. The communication was done through WhatsApp and the main interpretative tools were a map of the city and small stickers visualizing the landmarks of the game. The treasure hunt was set as follows: once they solved the riddle they had to get to the landmark, fulfil a task – an interactive activity, send a proof photo to the organising team that they reached the place and finally get a sticker from the volunteers waiting for them at the stop as to put it on the map. Apart from the riddles and the tasks, participants received to their phones important information about the landmark they just visited.

According to the participants’ sayings during the treasure hunt, they learned new things, working in teams, had fun and explored the city.

Apart from the interpretative activity of the treasure hunt and teenagers involvement, we would love to include more people for several reasons in our effort to highlight the importance of Mardin’s culture. Above all, we wanted locals to understand the value and importance of their own city and heritage. Thus, we wanted to transfer our knowledge of how to design a cultural route and a cultural activity for the interested public, and we did so through a workshop. The workshop was hosted and implemented in the emblematic building of Mardin Museum. The museum manager introduced the audience to the museum’s activities passing the word on what is heritage interpretation and interactive cultural routes. It was the first time for Mardin Kültür to go this public in Mardin.

At this point, I won’t talk any further about how the project went and how fun it was. I would like to point out that the Tandem family exists. To make this project come true, we needed help throughout the whole procedure and Tandemians were there for us every time.

For me, that was the highlight of my Tandem experience, because I realised that not only interested and passionate people exist, but also people believing in solidarity and selflessness. I strongly believe that the reason why Mardin Pasaji was that successful was because Tandem is always there to inspire you, help you and listen to you.

Mardin Pasajı was designed to involve the local community and the local actors in the main activity to promote and get to know Mardin’s cultural wealth. The main activities of the projects were on-site and bibliographic research, Interviews, Treasure hunting – teenagers’ involvement and a Workshop – seminar for local actors on promoting Mardin’s cultural wealth/